Intel Announces ‘SSD 310’ mSATA Solid State Drive

Intel last week made an SSD announcement that few were expecting, and even if we had to guess as to what the product would be, I think most of us would be wrong. The “Intel SSD 310” is not like most other SSDs we’ve become used to, as it’s of a much smaller form-factor. Standard SSDs are sized at around 100.5mm x 69.9mm x 9.5mm, while the mSATA-based 310 fits into 50.8mm x 29.85mm x 4.85mm.

Despite being not much larger than a domino, Intel’s SSD 310 packs quite a nice punch, on par with its bigger desktop offerings. On the 80GB model, the sequential write speed is a modest 70MB/s, while its read speed is a much more impressive 200MB/s. The 40GB sees degraded speeds, of 35MB/s and 170MB/s for the write and read, respectively.

No surprise, the IOPS performance is also impressive, which is to be expected from Intel. On the 80GB model, IOPS can reach 35,000 on the read, and 6,600 for the write, which regardless of the application, is fantastic. These drives might be small, but they’re fast, and still can deliver far better performance than a standard mechanical hard drive.

The 310 weighs a mere 10 grams and can be fit in mobile devices of all stripes. Of course, such stature comes at a price… $179 for the 40GB model, in quantities of 1,000. Ouch. But, given the speed, size and pluses, it could make an excellent addition to a wide variety of mobile devices.

As for the rest of Intel’s SSD updated lineup? While internal roadmaps showed a Q4 release for the 3rd generation X25-M based on 25nm NAND, that product is obviously delayed. We’re also hearing that new SandForce drives are still months away so those of you eagerly waiting for new drives at the high end will have to wait a bit longer.